Liberty conservatives in America have an uncanny ability of recognizing liberty conservatives across the pond.
Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie posted a tweet on March 21, 2022 where he praised former United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) leader and Brexit champion Nigel Farage.
Massie posted a video of Farage giving a speech during a European Parliament session in Strasbourg, France on September 16, 2014. In the video, Farage criticized the European Union for its efforts to incorporate Ukraine into the EU and NATO.
Massie tweeted, “Nigel is consistent. I can’t understand my fellow Americans who cheered when Britain left the EU but now think it would be great for Ukraine to join the EU.”
Nigel is consistent. I can’t understand my fellow Americans who cheered when Britain left the EU but now think it would be great for Ukraine to join the EU. https://t.co/edJm0T2A2U
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) March 22, 2022
Farage started off by providing the background to the events surrounding the Euromaidan crisis at the time:
This EU empire, ever seeking to expand, stated its territorial claim on the Ukraine some years ago. Just to make that worse, of course, some NATO members said they too would like the Ukraine to join NATO. We directly encouraged the uprising in the Ukraine that led to the toppling of the president, Yanukovych, and that led of course in turn to Vladimir Putin reacting. And the moral of the story is if you poke the Russian bear with a stick, don’t be surprised when he reacts.
The former UKIP leader was skeptical of the EU’s zealous commitment to incorporating Ukraine into the West, which he viewed as geopolitically tone deaf:
We are rushing through an Association Agreement at undue speed with the Ukraine and as we speak there are NATO soldiers engaged in military exercises in the Ukraine. Have we taken leave of our senses? Do we actually want to have a war with Putin? Because if we do, we are certainly going about it the right way.
At the time, Farage reminded his colleagues of what the real threat to the West was. Namely, Sunni radicals, which he outlined below:
Perhaps we ought to recognise that the West now faces the biggest threat and crisis to our way of life that we have seen for over 70 years. The recent beheadings of the British and American hostages graphically illustrates the problem. And of course we have our own citizens from our own countries engaged in that struggle, too.
Moreover, Farage employed some sober realism with regards to Russia, a country that has had to deal with its fair share of Islamic insurgents in the Chechen Wars:
In the war against Islamic extremism, Vladimir Putin, whatever we may think of him as a human being, is actually on our side. I suggest we grow up. I suggest recognize the real threat facing all of our countries, communities and societies. We stop playing war games in the Ukraine and we start to prepare a plan to help countries like Syria, like Iraq, like Kenya, like indeed Nigeria, to try and help them to deal with the real threat that faces us. Let’s not go on provoking Putin whether we like him or not.
Farage is one of the most principled defenders of individual liberties in the Anglosphere. Few people recognize the work that he has put in over the past two decades to move British politics rightward. There’s still a lot of work to be done in Albion, but without Farage, there is no doubt that Brexit would have never occurred.
Farage’s example demonstrates that all it takes is one man to make a difference.
